A wonderful bird is the pelican, His bill will hold more than his belican. He can take in his beak Food enough for a week. But I’m damned if I see how the helican.

I love learning the secrets of my plumed neighbors. The latest: That pouch suspended from the lower half of the pelican’s long straight bill? It really can hold up to three times more than its stomach. Enough for a week.

One episode of Downton Abbey is my personal pelican pouch.

The fiendish games and sweet scenes Julian Fellows dishes out weekly, the keep-’em-wanting-more shenanigans (like when Mr. Pamuk dies ‘on the job’ so to speak) fuel me from Sunday to Sunday. If you’re a proper obsessed fan ~ one of 25.5 million ~ of the Most Successful Ever British Drama, you’re mourning the end of the series.

I’m already hungering for the 2016 plot-clinching twists. Tom and Lady Rose may be out of the picture, but there must be some oil-on-the-fire sizzling hijinks ahead for Lady Edith and Lady Mary. Then there are the nonplussing matters of inheritance, wills, and family squabbles, oh my.

I wonder if Mrs. Hughes and Mr. Carson will marry and leave to run a B&B sooner than later? (Oh, wait, there is no later, only season six.) Will the distressed and downtrodden Edith marry the pig farmer?

Will Cousin Isobel (ugh, that Lord Merton and his dastardly spawn) and Cousin Violet move in together? Maybe Violet will bob her hair. Oh get over it, she’ll say.

Maybe Spratt and Denker will share a bowl of chicken soup.

Will Mr. Moseley marry O’Brien and become B&B couple #2?

I’m used to the idea that nothing good ever happens to the perennially unlucky, wrongfully-convicted, and alternately-jailed Anna and Bates. But they do suffer nobly, don’t they?

More importantly, will Daisy go to Oxford?

I wish they’d bring back Isis. Whatever was the point of that?

Oh, I’m going to miss those juicy Crawley plotlines.

No more sniping over the duck breast (oh no, the estate’s in peril again, what do you plan to do about it?), exchanging confidences over a glass of sherry, letters, letters, letters. I hoped the sun would never set on Downton Abbey. Hints from Fellowes in his New York Times interview a few weeks ago were marrow-freezingly scary. “Well, you know, Downton is a bumpy path.”

Bumpier, yet, when Robert loses his fortune and it’s my pouch that’s empty.